Hammer Screamers

The first woman to scream for Hammer was probably Shirley Grey in William Hinds’ second film, The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (1936). Among notable actresses whose function was to look decorative while in jeopardy were . . .

Veronica Carlson

Dracula’s most beautiful victim in Dracula Has Risen From The Grave (1968) also screamed twice for Frankenstein before Hammer found other beauties.

Carlson went into semi-retirement after marrying and moving to the United States. In later life, she worked as a professional painter. She died on 27 February 2022 at her home in Bluffton, South Carolina, aged 77.

Hazel Court

Best remembered for her subsequent roles in the Roger Corman movies of Edgar Allen Poe stories (The Premature Burial (1962), The Raven (1963) and The Masque of the Red Death (1964), she first played horror with fellow newcomers Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957).

By the early 1960s, Court was based in America, where she featured in episodes of several TV series, including Adventures in Paradise, Mission: Impossible, Bonanza, Dr Kildare, Danger Man, Twelve O’Clock High, Burke’s Law, Sam Benedict, Gidget, McMillan and Wife, Wild Wild West, Rawhide, and The Twilight Zone.

Court died of a heart attack at her home near Lake Tahoe, California, on 15 April 2008, aged 82.

Barbara Shelley

A former model, she appeared in several low-budget Italian productions before Hammer put her into The Camp on Blood Island (1958), the first of nine roles for the studio – perhaps her best being as Helen in Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966).

Shelley was admitted to the hospital in December 2020 for a check-up. It was there she contracted COVID-19.

Though she recovered, she fell ill with other underlying health conditions and died on 3 January 2021, aged 88.

Madeline Smith

It was while working at the Biba boutique in Kensington, London, that Maddy Smith was approached by Italian director Roberto Faenza, who wanted to “take peectures” of her in the park. The encounter led to her first film role in the Swinging London sequences of the drama Escalation (1968) alongside Italian actor Lino Capolicchio.

She never looked back and her film roles increased every month, from an almost silent (and blonde) appearance in Donovan Winter’s Come Back Peter frolic to a lead role in The Vampire Lovers (1970). She was also rarely off the small box, what with His and Hers, the Doctor At Large series, The Two Ronnies (Corbett and Barker), and sundry plays on all channels.

The exceedingly well-brought-up (and upholstered) young lady was invariably naked in her movies, which made for some memorable Hammer screen time (her first film with them was 1970s Taste the Blood of Dracula).

Ingrid Pitt

She landed the triple-role lead in The Vampire Lovers (1970) after meeting James Carreras at a party. Other roles followed (The House That Dripped Ingrid Pitt became a joke movie title of the 1970s). She went on to write scripts.

Pitt died of congestive heart failure in a south London hospital on 23 November 2010, two days after her 73rd birthday.

Notable others

Among others terrified for Hammer were Melissa Stribling, Yvonne Furneaux, Dawn Addams, Susan Strasberg, Heather Sears, Judy Matheson, Janette Scott, Moira Redmond, Kate O’Mara, Julie Ege, Judy Geeson and Joanna Lumley.